Georgia: Judge dismisses paper-ballot lawsuit in Georgia’s 6th District | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Voters in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District will continue to cast ballots on electronic machines after a Fulton County judge dismissed a lawsuit trying to force the use of paper ballots. Superior Court Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams’ ruling late Friday night came after an eight-hour hearing earlier this week over the suit’s insistence that Georgia’s reliance on voting machines was endangering the vote. The machines, it said, are too old, unreliable and vulnerable to malicious cyber attacks without a forensic review to verify they had not been compromised. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp celebrated Adams’ decision, which came two weeks into the state’s mandatory three-week early voting period for the nationally watched June 20 runoff between Republican Karen Handel and Democrat Jon Ossoff​.

Indiana: Voter registration group, employees charged with falsifying applications | The Washington Post

Twelve employees of the Indiana Voter Registration Project, which focused on registering black voters in the run up to last year’s presidential election, were charged Friday with submitting falsified voter registration applications. The voter registration group also faces criminal charges. Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry said officials did not find any evidence that fraudulent ballots were cast in last November’s election or that the group and its employees committed voter fraud. “These allegations pertain to voter registration applications provided to county officials before the November election,” he said in a news release. “Let me be clear that these are not allegations of voter fraud nor is there any evidence to suggest that voter fraud was the alleged motivation.”

Massachusetts: Lawmakers weigh automatic voter registration | Associated Press

Massachusetts residents could have their voter registration information automatically updated whenever they renew their drivers’ licenses or interact with other state agencies. A bill working its way through Beacon Hill would help ensure that more of the state’s nearly 700,000 eligible citizens who are not registered to vote are able to cast ballots on Election Day. “Massachusetts can lead the way toward giving all citizens a voice in their government,” said Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, a backer of the bill, which was the subject of a public hearing Thursday.

North Carolina: Redistricting reform gets a cold shoulder in Raleigh | Greensboro News-Record

If North Carolina legislators really want to end the legal quagmire that redistricting has become, they have plenty of options at their fingertips. A half dozen bills submitted this session in the state House and Senate offer pathways to what their sponsors depict as a less politicized process, capable of eliminating the alleged racial gerrymandering that has caused so much heartburn during the last six years. Choices on the table include turning the process over to nonpartisan bureaucrats, computer programmers and former judges. Or legislators could crank up a study commission to chart their escape from redistricting purgatory. But the potential remedies are all languishing in committee while successful lawsuits by aggrieved voters and activist groups force legislators to redraw voting maps dating to 2011, even as the decade’s end lurks just around the corner … when it’s almost time to begin a whole, new round of redistricting linked to the outcome of the next U.S. Census in 2020.

North Carolina: Federal court leaves open possibility for special elections this year | News & Observer

The three federal judges who could decide whether North Carolina will have special elections this year in state legislative races issued notice Friday that they plan to act quickly. The memorandum comes four days after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling unanimously affirming that 28 of North Carolina’s districts used to elect members to the state Senate and state House of Representatives are illegal racial gerrymanders that diluted the overall power of black voters. The challengers of the 2011 redistricting plan submitted a request on Thursday to the three-judge panel asking for quick resolution to fix the gerrymandered districts.

Ohio: Supreme Court Ruling On Ohio Voter Purge Will Have Long-Range Impact on Black Votes | Atlanta Black Star

The United States Supreme Court’s decision to review a challenge to Ohio’s voters roll purge policy brings the question of voter discrimination to the forefront again. In a case brought by Black trade unionist organization the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and Larry Harmon, an Ohio voter, Ohio’s “Supplemental Process” is being challenged as a violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

Puerto Rico: 23% of Puerto Ricans Vote in Referendum, 97% of Them for Statehood | The New York Times

With schools shuttered, pensions at risk and the island under the authority of an oversight board in New York City, half a million Puerto Ricans voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to become America’s 51st state, in a flawed election most voters sat out. With nearly all of the precincts reporting, 97 percent of the ballots cast were in favor of statehood, a landslide critics said indicated that only statehood supporters had turned out to the polls. Opposition parties who prefer independence or remaining a territory boycotted the special election, which they considered rigged in favor of statehood. On an island where voter participation often hovers around 80 percent, just 23 percent of registered voters cast ballots. Voting stations accustomed to long lines were virtually empty on Sunday.

Editorials: Virginia’s breakthrough on rectifying an enormous injustice | The Washington Post

Overcoming bitter opposition from Republican lawmakers, Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia has largely rectified an enormous, archaic injustice: the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of former felons — about half of them African Americans — whose debt to society has been paid, in many cases decades ago. After prevailing in state courts, Mr. McAuliffe, a Democrat, was able to assert his power under the state constitution and has so far restored the vote to more than 156,000 ex-convicts. By the time his four-year term in office ends in January, he is on pace to have restored rights (including the right to serve on juries) to at least another 5,000 former felons. It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of the governor’s action, which he himself called his “proudest achievement” in office. His recent predecessors, all recognizing the injustice of indefinite suspension of civil rights for people who had completed their sentences, had each taken steps to expand rights restoration — particularly the man who immediately preceded him, former governor Robert F. McDonnell, a Republican former prosecutor.

Wisconsin: Supreme Court could tackle partisan gerrymandering in watershed case | The Washington Post

With newly elected Scott Walker in the governor’s office and a firm grip on the legislature, Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 had a unique opportunity to redraw the state’s electoral maps and fortify their party’s future. Aides were dispatched to a private law firm to keep their work out of public view. They employed the most precise technology available to dissect new U.S. Census data and convert it into reliably Republican districts even if the party’s fortunes soured. Democrats were kept in the dark, and even GOP incumbents had to sign confidentiality agreements before their revamped districts were revealed to them. Only a handful of people saw the entire map until it was unveiled and quickly approved. In the following year’s elections, when Republicans got just 48.6 percent of the statewide vote, they still captured a 60-to-39 seat advantage in the State Assembly. Now, the Supreme Court is being asked to uphold a lower court’s finding that the Wisconsin redistricting effort was more than just extraordinary — it was unconstitutional.

France: Emmanuel Macron’s party set for landslide in French parliamentary elections | The Guardian

The French president Emmanuel Macron’s new centrist party looks set to take an overwhelming majority in parliament after the first round of elections held on Sunday. Official final results released early on Monday showed Macron’s one-year-old La République En Marche (Republic on the Move) and ally MoDem winning 32.32% in the first round, ahead of Les Républicains and its allies on 21.56% and the far-right Front National on 13.20%. The Socialist party – the party of Macron’s predecessor Francois Hollande – took just 9.5% of the vote with its allies. The result was however marred by a record low voter turnout of just 49%.

Germany: Election director eyes possible quiet period before election | Reuters

Germany should consider imposing a “quiet period” immediately before the federal election in September, similar to a media policy in place in France, election director Dieter Sarreither said, amid concerns about possible meddling by Russia. “We should discuss it and examine whether such steps are necessary,” Sarreither told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper in an interview published on Saturday. France has a 24-hour ban on media reports that could affect a French election before polls open. The measure helped to prevent more widespread reporting of a massive hack that released emails, documents and financing information just before campaigning ended ahead of the May election.

Italy: Renzi sees elections at natural end of legislature in 2018 | Reuters

Italy will not hold elections until the natural end of the legislature in spring next year, former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who leads the ruling Democratic Party (PD), said on Saturday. Renzi said he saw little hope of reforming the electoral system after a deal between the four largest parties broke down this week, meaning Italy will probably vote with a system considered inefficient and unlikely to produce a majority. In an interview with daily Corriere della Sera, Renzi denied that he wanted to go to the polls this autumn, as was widely believed, and when asked when he expected the election he replied: “in 2018, at the end of the legislature.”

Kosovo: Centre-right coalition on course to win parliamentary vote | Reuters

A coalition led by the ruling centre-right Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) came first in Kosovo’s snap parliamentary election on Sunday, but it will have to find a coalition partner to form a stable government, results based on a partial vote count showed. With 70 percent of votes counted, the PDK-led coalition had 34.3 percent of votes, the opposition Vetevendosje (VV) party 26.3 percent, and a coalition led by the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) 25.8 percent, the Democracy in Action non-governmental organization said About 1.9 million Kosovars, nearly half a million of whom live abroad, were registered to vote in the third election since Kosovo declared independence in 2008.

Moldova: Thousands protest over proposed voting changes | Reuters

Several thousand people took part in demonstrations across Moldova on Sunday, protesting both in favor of and against proposed changes to the electoral system that European rights experts see as “inappropriate”. The pro-European ruling coalition has been seeking to change the voting system in time for a parliamentary election next year, when its parties will be in a tough fight with pro-Moscow rivals who reject closer integration with Europe. Chanting “We will not surrender!”, some 4,000 protesters gathered in central Chisinau, appealing to the Venice Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and the United States to prevent the changes coming into force.

Russia: Opposition Leader Tests Public Support for Bid to Topple Putin | The New York Times

It would be three days before the fierce Kremlin critic Aleksei A. Navalny would bring his against-all-odds presidential campaign to the provincial city of Vladimir, but officials at the local university were taking no chances. About 100 students were ordered into the main auditorium to watch two short films attacking the opposition leader as both a United States State Department stooge and a would-be Nazi-saluting Hitler. When several students accused the lecturer of fear-mongering and suggested screening Mr. Navalny’s latest, wildly popular anticorruption video to broaden the discussion, she scolded them, saying, “You have no respect!” “It was nonsense, a smear against Navalny,” one sophomore who attended the lecture said in an interview, not wanting to use his name, given the implicit threats. “The government talks all the time about what it is doing, but it really does not function. Its only real activity seems to be fighting the opposition.”

The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for June 5-11 2017

A classified NSA report, leaked to the security-focused website The Intercept, described how Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election. While the report does not describe actual impacts on vote results from the November 2016 election it confirms the concerns of security experts and computer scientists that the highly decentralized, ageing U.S. election system remains profoundly vulnerable. The operation described in the document could have given attackers “a foothold into the IT systems of elections offices around the country that they could use to infect machines and launch a vote-stealing attack,” said J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist. “We don’t have evidence that that happened,” he said, “but that’s a very real possibility.”

A few days after the leak, recently-fired FBI director James Comey, responding to a question about Russian cyberattacks on the American election system in his closely-watched Senate testimony, referenced “a massive effort to target government and non-governmental—near governmental—agencies like nonprofits.” Somewhat lost in the partisan political battle that has followed Comey’s testimony is the chilling impact of Russian efforts to undermine Western democracy. In his testimony, Comey described Russia as the “greatest threat of any country on earth,” and he warned Thursday that Russia is “coming after America,” regardless of party, “to undermine our credibility in the rest of the world.”

Cyber security guru (and Verified Voting Board of Advisors member) warned in a Washington Post oped that Congress must act to protect our voting infrastructure from attacks. Schneier argues that “[d]emocratic elections serve two purposes. The first is to elect the winner. But the second is to convince the loser. After the votes are all counted, everyone needs to trust that the election was fair and the results accurate. Attacks against our election system, even if they are ultimately ineffective, undermine that trust and — by extension — our democracy. Yes, fixing this will be expensive. Yes, it will require federal action in what’s historically been state-run systems. But as a country, we have no other option.”

A Fulton County Georgia  judge heard eight hours of testimony and arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit calling for paper ballots in the hotly contested June 20 runoff between Republican Karen Handel and Democrat Jon Ossoff. Rocky Mountain Foundation and members of Georgians for Verified Voting are demanding that Fulton County Georgia argue that the state’s touch screen-based voting system is “uncertified, unsafe and inaccurate” and that the county officials must instead use paper ballots in the election to have a verifiable transparent election.

Following a recent advisory opinion from Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court that found parts of a voter-supported law introducing ranked choice voting in Maine was not in line with the state’s constitution, state legislative committees were unable to reached a decision about two ranked-choice voting bills submitted in response to the court decision. One bill sought to send a constitutional amendment to voters and one proposed an outright repeal of the measure. The stalemate in committee means the full Legislature will have to decide which of as many as five different options it likes best.

The ACLU and the League of Women Voters filed a lawsuit seeking to stop implementation of Missouri’s new photo ID voting law in advance of a July 11 St. Louis special election, claiming the law is an attempt to disenfranchise voters. Under questioning, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft could name only one case of voter fraud that the new requirement would have prevented.

The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that redistricting by North Carolina Republican lawmakers was intended to dilute the power of black voters. The justices also threw out a ruling by the same federal judges ordering special elections by November to fill the state legislature seats at issue in the dispute.

Voters in Puerto Rico go to the polls today on a fifth referendum on US statehood. If statehood wins, as expected, the island will enact what’s known as the Tennessee Plan, an avenue to accession by which U.S. territories send a congressional delegation to demand to be seated in Washington. All opposition parties in the country have vowed to boycott the Sunday poll, further threatening its credibility as few expect that a vote in favor of statehood would in fact lead to statehood.

Arguing that it is the next logical step for a statute found to be discriminatory, lawyers for minority voters and politicians asked a federal judge to void the Texas voter ID law. The lawyers also said they will ask U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos to require Texas officials to get U.S. Justice Department approval for any future changes to election law or voting procedures to guard against additional attempts to discriminate against minority voters.

After Italy’s lower house of parliament failed to reach agreement on a proposed new electoral law, there were renewed calls for early elections. However, President Sergio Mattarella has stressed that a new electoral law is needed before a new election can be called as the current law risks creating competing majorities in the two chambers of parliament, making the country ungovernable.

Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May suffered a major setback in a tumultuous election, losing her overall majority in Parliament and throwing her government into uncertainty less than two weeks before it is scheduled to begin negotiations over withdrawing from the European Union. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday urged officials to schedule an election to pick a new constituent assembly for July 30, but an emboldened opposition immediately called for a nationwide sit-in to protest against the move.

National: Top-Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election | The Intercept

Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept. The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light. While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying “raw” intelligence on which the analysis is based. A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.

National: Comey Says Russian Hackers Targeted ‘Hundreds’ of Election-Related Entities, and the Real Number ‘Could Be More Than 1,000’ | Nextgov

At the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday, committee Chairman Richard Burr asked James Comey to describe the scope of Russian-led “cyber intrusions” that took place during the 2016 election season. There was “a massive effort to target government and non-governmental—near governmental—agencies like nonprofits,” said Comey, the former FBI director. “What would be the estimate of how many entities out there the Russians specifically targeted in that time frame?” Burr asked. “It’s hundreds,” Comey said. “I suppose it could be more than 1,000, but it’s at least hundreds.”

Editorials: Russia’s attempt to hack voting systems shows that our elections need better security | Bruce Schneier/The Washington Post

This week brought new public evidence about Russian interference in the 2016 election. On Monday, the Intercept published a top-secret National Security Agency document describing Russian hacking attempts against the U.S. election system. While the attacks seem more exploratory than operational — and there’s no evidence that they had any actual effect — they further illustrate the real threats and vulnerabilities facing our elections, and they point to solutions. The document describes how the Russian GRU attacked a company called VR Systems that, according to its website, provides software to manage voter rolls in eight states. The August 2016 attack was successful, and the attackers used the information they stole from the company’s network to launch targeted attacks against 122 local election officials on Oct. 27, 12 days before the election. … This hack will certainly come up at the Senate hearing where former FBI director James B. Comey is scheduled to testify Thursday. Last year, there were several stories about voter databases being targeted by Russia. Last August, the FBI confirmed that the Russians successfully hacked voter databases in Illinois and Arizona. And a month later, an unnamed Department of Homeland Security official said that the Russians targeted voter databases in 20 states. Again, we don’t know of anything that came of these hacks, but expect Comey to be asked about them. Unfortunately, any details he does know are almost certainly classified, and won’t be revealed in open testimony.

Georgia: Ruling on paper-ballot suit in Georgia’s 6th District coming soon | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Voters in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District will likely know by week’s end whether they can continue using electronic machines or will have to cast ballots on paper. A decision to go with paper ballots would all but void the state’s current voting system with less than two weeks to go before a key election. A Fulton County judge heard eight hours of testimony and arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit calling for paper ballots in the hotly contested June 20 runoff between Republican Karen Handel and Democrat Jon Ossoff.

Maine: Ranked-choice voting bills go to full Legislature for debate | Portland Press Herald

A committee of lawmakers was unable to reach a consensus recommendation Thursday on two ranked-choice voting bills submitted in response to legal questions about the first-in-the-nation system approved by voters in November. In an often confusing work session, the Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee voted 6-6-1 on the bills. One sought to send a constitutional amendment to voters, and one proposed an outright repeal of the measure. The division means the full Legislature will have to decide which of five different options it likes best.

Missouri: Civil rights groups sue to block Missouri’s new voter ID law | St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The American Civil Liberties Union and another civil rights group filed suit Thursday seeking to stop implementation of Missouri’s new photo ID voting law in advance of a July 11 St. Louis special election, claiming the law is an attempt to disenfranchise voters. The suit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court in Jefferson City, alleges the state has failed to provide adequate public education about the new requirements. “Voters were promised that this law was not about disenfranchising the most vulnerable in our state,” Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU of Missouri, said in a written statement. “The state’s lack of funding and implementation of this law tells another story.”

North Carolina: US Supreme Court affirms North Carolina legislative districts as racial gerrymanders | News & Observer

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday affirmed a lower court ruling that found 28 North Carolina legislative districts to be illegal racial gerrymanders that diluted the overall impact of black voters. But the justices did not agree with the panel of three federal judges who decided that new maps should be drawn and special elections should be held in 2017 to correct the district lines approved by the Republican-led General Assembly in 2011. The Supreme Court order states the panel had not provided a strong enough basis for why it took the extraordinary step of calling for special elections this year. The order sends the case back to the lower court for reconsideration.

Puerto Rico: Puerto Rico votes again on statehood but US not ready to put 51st star on the flag | The Guardian

The hall is a sea of pink and white. About 350 Puerto Ricans, mostly women, have come to hear their First Lady speak in what they hope will be the final push towards a new relationship between their island and the United States. When Beatriz Rosselló, the 32-year-old wife of the governor of Puerto Rico, finally appears at the rally outside the capital San Juan, the room erupts into a frenzy of flag-waving. The American Stars and Stripes with its 50 stars, and the Puerto Rican emblem, with its single one, intertwine amid the flurry, giving the illusion that they have fused: 51 stars in a single banner of red, white and blue. … Rosselló and her supporters of the governing Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) hope to take that spirit of unification to the polling stations on Sunday when Puerto Rico holds its fifth plebiscite on statehood in 50 years. The ambition is to deliver such a resounding cry from the island’s 3.4 million citizens that Washington will be forced to take Puerto Rico on board as the 51st state of the United States.

Texas: Scrap new Texas voter ID law, plaintiffs tell federal judge | The Texas Tribune

A new law softening Texas’ strict voter identification requirements doesn’t absolve the lawmakers from intentionally discriminating against minority voters in 2011 — nor would it properly accommodate those voters going forward, the state’s opponents in a long-running lawsuit argued Wednesday. “Unfortunately, what the court is in the midst of is a larceny in progress,” Chad Dunn, a lawyer representing some of the challengers, told U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, accusing the Texas Legislature of trying to skirt responsibility for its sins of discrimination — reminiscent of state actions in the 1950s and 1960s. “It is a litigation strategy masquerading as a legislative function.”

Italy: Pressure builds for early Italy vote after electoral reform deal unravels | Reuters

A deal between Italy’s main political parties on electoral reform unraveled on Thursday, leading to calls for a snap election that could usher in more instability in the euro zone’s third largest economy. Two major opposition parties, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and the right-wing Northern League called for an immediate vote, and the ruling Democratic Party (PD) said it now seemed hard for the government to carry on. An accord in favor of a proportional representation voting system based on the German model collapsed after the PD lost a parliamentary vote on a minor, proposed amendment.

Kosovo: Sunday’s general election poses headaches for the winner | Associated Press

Kosovars vote on Sunday to choose the new 120-seat parliament that will face some seemingly intractable problems. There is the thorny issue of the border demarcation deal with Montenegro that brought down the previous government; the continuation of fraught talks with Serbia, which denies Kosovo’s existence as a state; and potential war crimes trials of some senior political leaders. Nineteen political parties, five coalitions and two citizens’ initiatives, all promising to break the isolation and secure growth, have nominated candidates.

United Kingdom: Theresa May Loses Overall Majority in U.K. Parliament | The New York Times

Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain suffered a major setback in a tumultuous election on Thursday, losing her overall majority in Parliament and throwing her government into uncertainty less than two weeks before it is scheduled to begin negotiations over withdrawing from the European Union. Mrs. May, the Conservative leader, called the snap election three years early, expecting to cruise to a smashing victory that would win her a mandate to see Britain through the long and difficult negotiations with European leaders over the terms of leaving the union. But according to results reported early Friday morning, the extraordinary gamble Mrs. May made in calling the election backfired. She could no longer command enough seats to avoid a hung Parliament, meaning that no party has enough lawmakers to establish outright control.

Venezuela: Maduro pushes new Venezuela vote, opposition calls for massive sit-in | AFP

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday urged officials to schedule an election to pick a new constituent assembly for July 30, but an emboldened opposition immediately called for a nationwide sit-in to protest against the move. Maduro on Sunday insisted that electing a new assembly to rewrite the constitution was the only way to end weeks of deadly protests, and turn a corner on Venezuela’s worsening political and economic crisis. In a televised speech he hailed what he said was a record number of people who registered to run as candidates in the vote. “Never has there been such a level of petitions and participation as there is in this case,” Maduro said. However, opponents have called the process a farce. They believe it is skewed to favour Maduro’s leftist authoritarian government, and have promised to boycott the vote.

National: Leaked NSA hacking report ratchets up pressure on local election officials | Cyberscoop

Despite new evidence from a leaked NSA report that Russian hackers sought to compromise state and local election technology, the officials in charge are still vigorously opposing the federal designation of their polling systems as critical infrastructure. “It’s unclear how this situation would change anyone’s opinions about the [critical infrastructure] designation,” Kay Stimson of the National Association of Secretaries of State told CyberScoop. NASS represents the state-level officials responsible for certifying statewide election results. Stimson added that officials didn’t get any additional resources to defend their networks as a result of the January 2017 announcement by the Department of Homeland Security, which many saw as a federal power grab. Federal officials have stressed that state or local participation in any DHS programs is voluntary, and suggested that DHS expertise might be able to help election officials secure themselves against online attacks.